Cambodia's bloody past revisited with new book

Loung Ung

February 22, 2000
Web posted at: 5:55 p.m. EST (2255 GMT)

From CNN's Kyra Phillips

(CNN) -- During Cambodia's civil war in the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people.

Today, the effects of the atrocities committed during that time are being relived in a new book by Loung Ung entitled "First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers" (HarperCollins).

Ung is a spokeswoman for the Campaign For a Land Mine Free World. Her father was killed by the Khmer Rouge for hiding his links to Cambodia's military and secret service. She eventually escaped from Cambodia as a refugee and resettled in Vermont.

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Loung Ung talks with CNN International's "Q&A" on... The reaction of second-generation survivors 155K MP3 or 212K WAV sound How writing her book helped save her sanity 155K MP3 or 213K WAV sound

But her experiences have continued to haunt and mold her. She spoke recently with CNN anchor Kyra Phillips.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk about what happened when you were 7 years old, when your father was killed and how your mother basically told you to go.

LOUNG UNG, AUTHOR OF "FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER": Yes. My father at that point was my everything, and after my father was killed, my mother knew that if we stayed together, we would all be killed together. I was 7, my sister was 9, and my other brother was 12, and my mother basically gathered us together and said, "You have to leave and just go away -- walk away from me. I cannot handle you. Once you get to a place, tell them you're orphans." And a year later, I found out that I didn't have to pretend to be an orphan anymore, because a soldier did come for my mother and my 5-year-old sister.

CNN: Now, as an orphan you recount a lot of these simple and savage events that happened in your life. Of course, when we hear "Khmer Rouge" we know there will be a lot of savage accounts, but what about the simple things that you remember?

UNG: The simple things were, I think, just the living in fear as a child and not knowing what you would do or what you could do that would cause your family's death.

And for me, I remember being in the village and hearing the cow bells as they strolled through the fields and thinking to myself, "You must not mention how that reminds you of ice cream bells," because otherwise the Khmer Rouge would know that we were posing as peasants and they would somehow know our real identities and that would cause all of us to be in danger. And so, there was that constant living in fear as a 7-year-old and not knowing what you could say that would put your families in danger.

CNN: Fear helped you to survive. Tell me what you did to survive. I remember reading in your book a lot of the things you had to do in order to survive and some are very brutal. Will you share with us some of those?

UNG: Yes. After my parents were killed I had to basically fend for myself. Every day was a conscious decision to be alive. Every day I'd say to myself, "I have to find food -- either I have to hurt somebody, or I have to steal it from somebody."

And also, because I was so vulnerable and I had so much hate in me, and the Khmer Rouge rewarded that, they put me in a military training camp, where they feed that anger. Every time I was violent with other children they would reward me with food.

CNN: Your publisher wanted to promote this book as you being the Anne Frank of this generation, but you disagreed. Why is that?

UNG: I feel that Anne Frank -- God bless her -- her family survived a very different situation. Our stories are similar in that we are people who basically fought so hard to survive and yet us Cambodian survivors, we need our own identities and our own space. To lump everybody together, whether we're Bosnians or Cambodians or Kosovo or Rwanda, it denies us that recognition from the world that we're survivors of. We have our own identities and we need to be recognized.

HarperCollins

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